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but at long last his hand reached out and struck against the supple leather handbag.
    He fumbled inside.
    His hands, wrapped in white linen like mittens, were clumsy and cold from shock. His search yielded a zippered compartment.
    He opened the hiding place and slipped the amulet ring inside the pouch. He zipped it shut again and then shoved the purse as deeply as he could reach into the nearby bushes.
    Later he could come back for it.
    If there was a later.
    He lay there panting, hoping he had outsmarted his attackers. Sweat dripped into his face; salt burned his eyes. He blinked even though he could not see.
    And that was when two pairs of rough, careless hands reached down, grabbed him by the upper arms, and hauled him away in the darkness.
    All the occupants of the exhibit hall erupted into the courtyard.
    Osiris, Horus, two Nefertitis, three King Tuts. Anubis, Seth, Isis, and Ra. Harrison lost count as the courtyard filled up with more than a hundred curious guests. All the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt converging upon Fort Worth, Texas.
    And then he caught sight of Ahmose, the real Egyptian royalty, standing off to one side.
    Harrison followed the group, but his brain was back there in the dark, holding a trembling Cassie close to his chest. He would have bet hard cash she was truly frightened and not putting on, but he wasn’t about to place his trust in her.
    Still, her sweet, delicate perfume enthralled him, clung to his clothes. She smelled like a garden, a bouquet, a spring event. Like some ripe, rich fruit in full bloom.
    A scent like, oh, say, cherry blossoms?
    The unexpected memory of that long-ago night in the Valley of the Kings when he had caught Jessica smooching Adam washed over him, and Harrison remembered why he’d started out to the courtyard in the first place.
    To find out if Cassie knew what was going on with Adam.
    But that had been before he’d held her in the dark, before the lights had come on and she’d looked both shocked and disappointed to discover he was the one holding her.
    To Harrison’s own mind, in the darkness, he had been someone else. Someone more like Adam. An easygoing guy with a fun-loving grin. A swashbuckling hero who knew how to dress, could court the ladies as easily as he could pick out the right wine for a gourmet feast, and wasn’t so color-blind he couldn’t tell blue from green.
    Enough.
    He had to stay mentally tough. He couldn’t forget the woman was the antithesis of everything he valued.
    “Well?” Phyllis Lambert said to Cassie. “Who got murdered? Where’s the body?”
    The crowd murmured, echoing the curator’s questions. The courtyard was empty.
    No body. No blood. No sign of a struggle.
    Harrison pushed his glasses up on his nose and watched Cassie peer down at the cobblestones where she stood near the hedges. She looked confused.
    And heartbreakingly vulnerable.
    She nibbled her bottom lip and shifted her weight from foot to foot. She kept bobbing her head as if to convince herself she was right and everyone else’s eyes were deceiving them.
    “He was here before the lights went out, I swear,” she declared. “A guy in a mummy costume, and he had a knife sticking out of his back.”
    “So who was this mysterious stranger?” Phyllis sank her hands on hips so narrow her palms slid right down her outer thighs.
    Harrison had never seen Cassie distressed. He had the strangest urge to shove himself between the two of them and tell the curator to step off.
    “I don’t know,” Cassie admitted.
    For a minute the earnestness in her voice almost had Harrison believing that she was telling the truth, that there really was a backstabbed mummy crawling around in the bushes.
    “You expect us to believe some guy with a Ginsu in his back just got up and toddled off?” Phyllis tapped her foot.
    “I never said it was a Ginsu. It very well could have been a Henckels. I really didn’t look that closely.”
    “That’s not what I meant,” Phyllis